Presentation to the UW Board of Trustees FY21 Budget University of Wyoming Libraries May 11, 2020 1. Overview It is a distinct honor and privilege to serve the University of Wyoming and the State of Wyoming in providing high quality library and research services to students, faculty, and residents across the State. And an honor to present the FY21 UW Libraries Budget to our Board of Trustees. While this coming budget year and biennium will undoubtedly be challenging in various ways charting our new realities of a global pandemic, our library team is well situated to meet these challenges in a safe and responsible manner and to respond to University and State needs for quality information and resources, and find new opportunities for partnerships and for innovative and exciting services. 2. Mission / Vision Specifics During our University strategic planning process of 2016 ‐ 17, the library began charting a new course that not only built on excellence already achieved in supporting top ‐ notch undergraduate and graduate education, but through this planning process we extended our mission to include enhancing in intentional ways the educational experiences of students and faculty of the University. Mission Imperatives are to: a. Create new and more engaging learning spaces in our libraries b. Recast librarian positions for student engagement and success, and for online learning c. Showcase digital learning and scholarship d. Partner more fully with University colleges and departments to support their fine work 3. Strengths of UW Libraries: a. Service – our Number #1 priority b. Excellence in support of undergraduate education c. Collections d. Support of research through the creation and management of the PetaLibrary (a “big data” storage and management system) e. Leading the national community of academic libraries in photogrammetry f. Developing Wyoming collections where we are now one of the top ‐ five national repositories of material related to Yellowstone National Park g. Creation of the first Maker Space on campus – open to students, faculty and the general public – free of charge (except if expensive materials are involved, in which case it is cost recovery) 1 of 4
h. Creation of the first fully ‐ endowed librarian position (one of 8 or 10 in the nation) i. Our annual “Author Event” sponsored by UW Libraries Development Board, has brought to campus the likes of David McCullough, Kathy Reichs, Dave Barry and Timothy Egan. (The program is now under review.) 4. UW Libraries Aligned with the strategies and priorities of the University As the FY 20 took hold, President Theobald identified priorities for UW in 2019 and 2020. UW Libraries has been committed to spending our FY20 budget dollars to advance these priorities. Since these priorities tend to be for the long haul and our support will continue as we expend our FY21 budget. That is to say, this narrative is also relevant to the FY21 budget. A. First, UW aims to challenge and inspire undergraduate and graduate students and promote professional and life ‐ long learning. UW Libraries addressed this by: i. Using student fees and operations dollars ($100,000 and $130,000 respectively) to refurnish Coe Library’s study and gathering spaces. ii. Create pop ‐ up spaces for campus operations, such as the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (College of Business) and other groups, that wish to meet in Coe library and take advantage of wide visibility and student traffic. iii. Advance the technology and programming in the Coe Student Innovation Center (the first “makerspace” on campus). Fabric design and printing machines have been added, new programming for K ‐ 12 students to use virtual reality have been developed, and 4H groups now use the Center to become adept at using new technology. iv. We have begun partnering with the Dean Brent Picket at UW ‐ Casper to develop “Centers for Innovation and Life ‐ Long Learning.” v. This past year, our Studio Coe – a workshop for students and faculty to use high ‐ end audio and video editing equipment – has tippled in use and we have now added equipment for editing virtual reality images. vi. To help students engage in social medial, this spring we constructed a sound ‐ proof room in Studio Coe for creating and editing pod ‐ casts. These are some of the ways we used our FY20 budget to challenge and inspire students and to support professionalism and life ‐ long learning. B. A second key priority of the University is to advance our campus commitment to cutting ‐ edge research, scholarship, the arts and creative activity. UW Libraries supports this through a number of ways (including some noted above). i. UW Libraries initiated and achieved membership for University of Wyoming in the University Press of Colorado and Utah. Now including Wyoming, we have UW’s imprint on approximately 60 scholarly 2 of 4
monograph titles published annually by the press. Some UW faculty now serve on the Press’s editorial teams, and UW Libraries has begun sponsoring scholarly publishing workshops for faculty. The cost of membership, fully borne by UW Libraries, is $22,000 per year. Money well spent and heartily approved by UW faculty. ii. FY20 has seen UW create in Coe Library a “Digital Scholarship Center.” While in the final stages of set ‐ up, the Center provides faculty support for scholarship through various technologies, such as ORCID that tracks and manages scholarly output, financing and supporting our Open Educational Resource program for faculty publication of open access textbooks, and developing “Mountain Scholar,” an open source digital repository for journals published by the University. iii. UW Libraries maintains its region ‐ wide reputation for having one of the top research libraries in the Rocky Mountain east. We are a net ‐ lending library and continue to enjoy membership in the Greater Western Library Alliance (GWLA) made possible through a strong collections budget over the past 10 years. C. The third University priority this past year is to engage in outreach across Wyoming by serving the changing educational, research and economic development needs of the State. UW Libraries helps achieve this priority in two ways: i. UW Libraries spend approximately $1.2 million of our annual budget in purchasing state ‐ wide licenses to databases that are not only suited for our use but also welcomed by our partner community colleges and the county public libraries across Wyoming. ii. We support the research interests of two of our librarians who have begun investigating the role public libraries can play in promoting and supporting local economic development. As their work continues, they will provide Wyoming communities with recommendations to further develop and support local economic development through resources and programming of public and college libraries. D. The fourth key priority is to develop strong academics at affordable prices. In FY20, UW Libraries supported this priority in two ways: i. Noted above, our Open Education Resources program that began in 2018 continued in FY20 with UW Libraries awarding grants to faculty to produce free, quality textbooks for UW students. This spring, our OER data report shows UW students saved approximately $40,000 per semester. Faculty receive approximately $20,000 in grants each semester ranging from $1,000 to $3,000. To date, students have saved over $140,000 by using these free textbooks. ii. In summer, 2019, UW Libraries received its first endowed librarian position. Designed to teach and support education in UW’s new Honors 3 of 4
College, our first appointment to the Carol J. McMurry Distinguished Librarian for Academic Excellence, joined our team this past September. This position adds significant benefit to Honors College students at no cost to the University or students. The $2.5 million endowment fully funds the position in perpetuity. 5. FY21 Budget A. Highlights: ‐ The FY21 bottom line is the same as FY20, except for increases due to the FY20 salary raise and benefits: Total Budget FY20 $14,525,053 Total Budget FY21: $14,692,326 Difference +$167,273 ‐ Other line variances of FY21 over FY20 are simply due to funds shifting between accounts within various Orgs. ‐ Our collections budgets remain relatively strong, in the range of $8 – $9 million, including “digital collections”, but this amount has remained static for approximately 10 years. With the annual increases of electronic resources (mainly online journal aggregations) of approx. 5% annually, the buying power of the collections budget has been reduced considerably. ‐ We had requested for FY20 a $200,000 loan from reserves to cover costs of an expedited Wyoming Newspaper digitization project. Due to underspending in FY20 in operations stemming from salary savings, less travel this spring, and with furniture orders unfilled due to the economic shutdowns and worker layoffs, we can fund this amount in FY20. FY21 originally included a partial repayment of this amount, with another anticipated for FY22. Without the loan, there is no repayment needed. ‐ We expect about a $200,000 underspend by June 30, 2020, fiscal yearend . ‐ Our current personnel data approaching FY21: Going into FY21: 59 f.t.e (23 FTE librarians; 36 f.t.e. staff) This is a slight increase over FY19 and 20. By comparison, in FY15 we had 72 f.t.e. B. Laurie and I welcome comments, questions, suggestions, points of discussion 4 of 4
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